Where Is the Philosopher of This Age?

Dear friends:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A few emails have been posted below by the permission of the writers.
It is a partial email dialogue between our outstanding philosopher friend Martin and a couple of us,
 Dio & BH

You are very welcome to join our dialogue. God bless! BH
Also for further thinking, click the following links.

•      If All Religions are True then God is Cruel

•      Faith as "The Emperor's New Clothes" ?

Hi Martin,

So, your new favorite "theology" is the Postmodern kind.

In tolerating all religions, the postmodernist denies the uniqueness of every religion.

In being all-inclusive, the postmodernist discredits all thoughts other than his own.

In claiming "There is no absolute objective truth", he claims that alone is the absolute truth.

In acknowledging God's existence, the postmodernist proceeds to fashion God in his own image.

In embracing Postmodernism, the postmodernist embraces none but himself.

Is it less disturbing for me to study theology? I did my due diligence in studying Christian theologies of various schools. (But I don't claim to be a scholar in theology) I enjoy very much thinking through them and find myself greatly edified by them. I just don't waste my time with empty gibberish... and I make sure I spend more time with the Bible itself than with books about it. That way, I have a standard to measure what I'm reading.

You keep saying that the Bible is filled with myths, and yet you refuse to examine any historical and literary evidences to the contrary. I wonder why? Is it less disturbing for you if the Bible is only a collection of myths instead of truth statements of God? Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" But he never had the ear to hear Him nor the eyes to see Him who was the Truth Himself.

Yes, the blind can only touch parts of the elephant, and therefore do not have the full view of it. This parable makes sense to us because there is such an object called an elephant.  The Postmodernist says you can make the elephant any shape you want it to be and he thinks his fingers are more observant than someone else's eyes. Thank God that the Creator of the elephant is in the business of open the eyes of the blind.

You say, "Just to be immersed in the Biblical stories is salvation by itself." ???

The Word of God says, " For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved." (Rom 10:10)

Beware of the man who analyses the restaurant menu but never eats the food there!

Dio

Dear Martin,

I'm glad you have taken our dialogues and checked them with others with views similar and different from your own. Please understand that my goal of carrying on these dialogues with you is not to win an argument ( because I am no match to a learned scholar like you), but to help you understand that while Christianity has historically tested and intellectually upheld doctrines and theology, it is the eternal life in Jesus that matters at the end.

We, your old Christian classmates, have this one common prayer of salvation for you. I think Marian expressed it best for all of us in her emails.

If there is one thing clear in the Bible, that would be that Jesus Christ is the Savior of mankind. There really is no room for the mindset of "whatever God means".

Dio

Dear Martin:

You said in your email:"...But by being dogmatic, exclusive and

absolutist you have missed out much of what God creates (whatever God means)."

So we have missed out much of what God creates? And you can't even define what "God" you are talking about?

Can God be " whatever God means"? Or to put it down to earth, can "you" be whatever our email pals and former college friends define?

I agree with Dio, there is no room of calling our Creator God undefined as  "whatever God means".

Being growing up in a Presbyterian background, I do know quite a few relatives, friends who used to be enthusiastic Christians going to seminary in order to serve God better and to spread the Gospel; however, at the end of their seminary studies, unfortunately, they lost their faith and enthusiasm to spread the Gospel, or they spread another secular or more liberated gospel. That surely is a great pity! 

All those scholars, theologians, liberals who were lost in the theological and philosophical thickets, should ask themselves, are they better off after they were supposedly liberated from their original faith with a loving God who sent His Son to die for our sins. They could find they are actually enslaved with a new worldly or cultural ...god, whatever that god means to them. ( or they may not even be aware of their current conditions.)

Dear Martin, your Christian friends are not burying their heads in the sand like an Ostrich. We are just not counting on the spirit of the world, nor the wisdom of the world alone.

1 Corinthians 1:20
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
1 Corinthians 1:21
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.22For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; 23but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness,…1 Corinthians 2:12
What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.

Dear Martin, Please be aware that human wisdom may prevent you from seeing the Kingdom of God, let alone getting into God's kingdom.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.(insight) (ESV)( Proverb 9:10)

The Bereans Search the Scriptures( Acts 17)( this is also what Dio said that he examines various theologies by scriptures. )

10 As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas off to Berea. On arrival, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 The people here were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, since they welcomed the message with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Consequently, many of them believed, including a number of the prominent Greek women as well as men.

BH

If all religions were true...

1. If all religions are true, then Christianity is true and valid, yet an essential claim of 

Christianity is that all other religions are false, taken as a whole.

2. Either Christianity is true and others are false, or others are true and Christianity is false.

3. Either way, all religions can't be true.

Contradiction: All religions are true.  All religions are not true.

Click the following link to read the whole article.

Truthbomb Apologetics: A Quick Refutation of Pluralism
(Originally, Greg Koukl's Interactive Series Tactics in Defending the Faith.  
In the series Koukl demonstrates quickly and concisely why pluralism (the view that all religions are equally true 

and valid) defeats itself or, in his words, commits "suicide.")


It is popular to think  "Many paths up the same mountain" yet the only person that knows all paths lead 

to the top is the person on the top, so anyone claiming to have this knowledge is claiming to be on top 

of that mountain, a.k.a God. ( Bo commented below the original post in above link; 

it is slightly paraphrased here.)

A real testimony from a person who thought every path goes to the same ultimate spiritual end. ( Click the link below

http://www.cbn.com/tv/3527070794001

If All Religions are True then God is Cruel

Dear friends:

Have you watched this film "Most" ( Bridge) before?

If not, then the link below is the part which touches my heart the most in that film.

Most - The Bridge - YouTube

"Most"( Bridge) is the story of a single father who takes his eight year-old son to work with him at the railroad drawbridge where he is the bridge tender. A day before, the boy meets a woman boarding a train, a drug abuser. At the bridge, the father goes into the engine room, and tells his son to stay at the edge of the nearby lake. A ship comes, and the bridge is lifted. Though it is supposed to arrive an hour later, the train happens to arrive. The son sees this, and tries to warn his father, who is currently not paying attention and is unaware of the oncoming train. Just as the oncoming train approaches, his son falls into the drawbridge gear works while attempting to lower the bridge, leaving the father with a horrific choice. The father then lowers the bridge, the gears crushing the boy. The people in the train are completely oblivious to the fact a boy died trying to save them, other than the drug addict woman, who happened to look out her train window. The movie ends, with the man wandering a new city, and meets the woman, no longer a drug addict, holding a small baby. Other relevant narratives run in parallel, namely one of the female drug-addict, and they all meet at the climax of this tumultuous film

After having watched the above You Tube then read the article in this link below.

I think this article is the best illustration to show not all religions will work despite our best humanistic  wishes.

I know I am very politically incorrect, but truth is truth. Please click the link below for the whole article.

If All Religions are True then God is Cruel

...Now picture the same scenario, but with a twist this time. Suppose the boy had fallen into the gear-works and the train was rushing towards the raised bridge, but this time, the father had two levers: one to lower the bridge and kill his son (like in the original scenario) and one to divert the train onto an alternate track that took it over a second, parallel bridge. It would be madness for the father to choose the first lever and kill his son with the second lever being right within reach! Why on earth would he kill his son when he knows fully well that the second lever is capable of saving both the lives of all the train passengers and the life of his son? Such a decision would be utterly appalling. Only a monster would choose the first lever.

And yet this is exactly what religious pluralists make God out to be.

“All religions are true.”

“All religions lead to God.”

“All roads lead to the same destination.”

While I can understand the sentiment of inclusivity, this idea creates an evil God. If all religions are true then God is cruel. And not just cruel–God is an incompetent, cosmic child-abuser. If religious pluralism is true, then God is the father in the second scenario. He saw the train coming and he decided to pull the first lever and kill his son, rather than pull the second lever. If Islam, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and all the other world religions are true paths to God, then why did God kill his Son, Jesus, in order to make a way for men to come to Him? The very notion is absurd and insulting to God. It paints a portrait of a God who is really, really cruel. He sent Jesus into the world to live a miserable life of scorn, rejection, poverty, betrayal, humiliation, sorrow, and ultimately, torture and death, in order to create a path whereby men can come to know Him, all the while knowing that following the Five Pillars of Islam or the Noble Eight-fold Path could accomplish the very same thing! What a waste! Jesus’ life–God’s plan of salvation– is completely in vain for the same result could be achieved through persons simply adhering to the tenets of any world religion. God is not only cruel, but incompetent for putting into effect the worst salvation plan possible.

But God is not cruel. He is not incompetent. He would not kill his Son needlessly. He would not put into effect a ridiculous or cruel salvation plan for mankind. Hence, religious pluralism cannot be true. This does not show Christianity to be true, but it does show that not all religions can be true, for if they were, then God would not be a God of love–He would be a cosmic sadist or an incompetent guardian of the universe, or both.